Located southeast of Bermuda, Hydrostation ‘S’—a set of unmarked geographic coordinates (32 degrees 10 minutes North, 64 degrees 30 minutes West)—has yielded measurements of temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity and other parameters every two weeks for seven decades.

Plus, ASU BIOS announces new scholarship opportunities for Bermuda students.

Even casual observers of environmental science understand the fundamental interconnection between atmospheric conditions and the well-being of marine ecosystems. What happens in the atmosphere inevitably finds its way into the ocean and, vice versa, the outcomes of deep ocean processes eventually bubble up to the surface and into the air above. Yet, the authors of a recently published paper point out, one would be hard-pressed to find these connections between the air and ocean represented adequately – if at all – in international environmental policies and regulations.

Dr. Samantha Hallam and ASU BIOS COO Dr. Mark Guishard are teaming up again to expand upon the work related to the effect of upper ocean heat on Bermuda hurricanes conducted during Dr. Hallam’s internship at BIOS in 2019.

The highly anticipated and fully booked Climate Classroom made its return to the ASU BIOS campus recently, leading students through an immersive learning experience. The novel program highlighted climate change science while exploring current and future potential impacts for Bermuda. With exclusive donor support from HSBC, 230 students participated in this gamified immersive learning experience for M2s across Bermuda between February 27th and March 14th. The Climate Classroom invited students to explore the ASU BIOS campus, learning about the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and Bermuda’s coastlines through the Curriculum Enrichment Program within ASU BIOS’s Ocean Academy. Students were exposed to future careers in ocean science, while piloting emerging media such as extended reality [XR].

In a multi-national collaborative study published August 22, 2018 in Science Advances, climate simulations and subsequent analyses of tropical cyclone activity were led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the University of Melbourne and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Project leads used climate models to estimate the maximum number of tropical cyclones that might occur in the North Atlantic in the current climate.

New research published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment uses data from two sustained open-ocean hydrographic stations in the North Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda to demonstrate recent changes in ocean physics and chemistry since the 1980s. The study shows decadal variability and recent acceleration of surface warming, salinification, deoxygenation, and changes in carbon dioxide (CO2)-carbonate chemistry that drives ocean acidification.

Upwelling regions account for just 1% of the world’s oceans, yet they are responsible for producing roughly half of the global fishing industry’s annual harvest—worth an estimated $362 billion as of 2016. These nutrient-dense, cool-water regions play a vital role in global ecosystems, supporting the growth of the seaweed and plankton that are the backbone of the marine food web.

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Oceans are critical to stabilizing the world’s climate, absorbing a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions and capturing 90 percent of the excess heat they generate. By some estimates, the ocean also accounts for up to half the annual emissions of another greenhouse gas – nitrous oxide (N2O), the third most important climate emission after carbon dioxide and methane. With the climate changing amid record high atmospheric levels of all three gases, the importance of the marine nitrogen cycle is ripe for study.